Sequin Sestina                                                                        

The boy quit drawing the sea.
Here’s an afternoon just for him: blue sequins
in the gin. Like the idea of loving him: I set the dolls
along the windowsill. I gave each a bullet & a little scrap
of news. Somewhere my mother’s prayer
clots to the ceiling. Somewhere she’s calling me angel.

On my side of town, I swallow an angel.
He loves yellow light, gold mirrors. The glow of the sea
drawing. Waves are animals. Animals are to lick, as lick is to prayer.
The boy is sick on grunge. Kitty Sequins
was his drag mother. A glass eye & wing scrap.
Like any real icon, she died swallowing. Dolls

in the attic. Bye-bye! waved the sweetest dolls
from the window. I wanted to cry inside the drawing. I was the angel
in the motel mirror he loved & loved. A plate for scrap
bones in the hall. In the right jeans, I open like the sea.
The bells of St. Mary’s ring up my mother’s dress. Red sequins
line her skull, like division or prayer.

I’m feeling historic in my leather choker. A wet prayer:
his body rising from the black sea. The boy teaches dolls,
who know nothing but burn, pucker, sequins.
Later he’ll draw a heart-shaped angel
with his mother’s face: veiled, covert. The sea
drags at her heels like a missing child. A scrap

of paid miracle. The evangelist tongues an orange scrap.
Someone slides a finger into his mouth. Buried prayer
hangs limp in the scrolls of his beard. What about the sea,
those boys? We know him. His body. The wet dolls.
Their dresses harden in secret. They are buried in the quiet white of angels.
The drawings. The lines. Terrible sequins.